Looks amazing. I can't believe how much work has gone into this all solo. Wow. For some reason the atmosphere of the different scenes make me feel sad and melancholic, but not in a bad way. Positively disorienting.
Thanks for the amazing words! That's the mood I want to go for
So I'm currently working on a bath for the main characters room. It will be filled with a lot of crazy inventions that people will have later (most idea's are based on concepts from the 50's to 70's) For example, this bath is inspired on a bath that was presented at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka.
I want to make a little sequence for it that it fills with water and some water particles out of the sprayers. If someone knows a great way to do this or has a tutorial that could help, please send it to me!
Hello! More and more progress has been made on the main characters house. Just like the rest of the game, the style is a mix of retro. 50's & 60's in combination with science fiction and cyberpunk. It's really fun to work on this and find the combination between these two styles to make it believe able. The main character is surviving the big crisis (more on that later, and see my earlier posts) in his house. Therefore it is full of cans with food, etc. This is you characters main house and the start of the game so it will be filled with a lot of detail and clues where you can find out how the world came the a point where it is now.
When the room/house is finished, I'll post some more (detailed) screenshots
Awesome work! This whole project is just super interesting to me, partly because I love world building. I'm very impressed with how clear and consistent you've made the art style, and how that reflects in the mood/atmosphere. On the technical side of things, I'm curious what the performance is like while exploring, since it's obvious the scene is ambitious in scale. Anyways, keep going! I can't wait to see more.
Yeah performance is a thing I'm continuously paying attention to. I first worked with distance field ambient occlusion, but that was such an impact on the performance that I moved away from that lately. Luckily the visual changes were minor. When importing models I directly work with LOD's. And level design wise I used some clever view blocking objects and design elements which helps performance big times. The performance is still oke, but yeah, it's is tricky making such big levels hahah
Hello! long time no post. Still working on the trailer, but I've had less time the last couple of months. I wanted to show you some gameplay. Maybe it will be in the trailer, maybe not. Not sure yet. Let me know what you think! Ps: Also, here are some screenshots from the place.
It's been a while since I've updated this blog with some new updates. I've been busy with my own company: https://www.extrude3d.nl/ I've spend a whole year developing projects in Unreal for clients. This means images in Unreal, video animations in Unreal but most important. Digital twin applications. So I've learned a ton on the programming side! All good news for the project since I now can program my own gameplay elements as well.
The biggest change so far for the project. I've migrated the project to Unreal Engine 5! With all the neon lights and cool indoor spaces, Lumen really does the trick here! Since the old project is quite a mess and way to big in size already (120GB, oops hahah) I've started from scratch. This means that some areas in the game are lost, so I've to redo them. Luckily the old project is still there so doing the level design is quite easy. Props have better LOD's or use nanite now. Textures are reduced, materials are better and optimized and level streaming is better organized. That I need to do some levels again design wise means it will take some time before you will see some new areas. But it's already showing the benefits. Area's that are the same now show +30 FPS! So that's a plus.
Let me know what you want to see. I can show some behind the scene's level design wise. I can show how I create props and elements. Or I could stream an hour of me level designing. Let me know! I'll try to update a bit more from time to time now.
Switched to 5.1 with the project. Best choice so far! Lumen can do amazing things. Enjoying the level designing and asset creation. So far i bought 3 asset packs for the environment and used the some megascans. The rest is all hand made. Switching between 3D and some 2D decal and advertisement creation is a nice balance. I'm not very font of turning this into a shooter or typical horror game, got some gameplay ideas in mind but if you have some suggestions let me know!
1st time seeing this thread, these are my 1st thoughts from an outsider looking in, hopefully it helps somehow.
Dedication ftw, pre-warning, not to remove all the hard work, i commend the effort it is admire-able, however i felt the need to share as it might help the author see an outsiders 1st thoughts.
Okay, i usually do this (to myself and keep it to myself but) which kind of "breaks", the fantasy aspect of games but how do these "people" breathe? or there are no people? Zero greenery to be seen not even 1 potted flower/plant, i take it this is the theme?
For a "city" like this to even get created, they would need to all be doing really well to warrant the need to even think to create this type of environment, & if there are no people here and just robotics or something along the lines of "imitation life-forms", they would create "cities/environments" to suite them not keep the discontinued "alt-life", that no longer remains.
Example, all the lights would probably be off to save what power is left, animals or rats would've eventually eaten though a lot of the garbage and it would be sprawled out on most of them, a lot of things would've have fallen from their places, depending on time-frame the EARTH (if this is taken from there and not some floating area) would've cracked some buildings in half, or sunken many objects including buildings, the ground is still present i presume.
If this is all just for story telling and not a game at all, then i think its all okay ignore this post then, thou these thoughts might still arise in all new viewers especially people not viewing all these updates and any explanations to pieces, maybe young teens wouldn't care much about the logic behind it all so it works there.
At the moment i can not even do half of this (yet) so take all this with the grainiest of salts, (i.e. not to heart, i mean well).
Besides all of this, amazing mountain of work and effort, i echo the love of the emotion you are getting across with all of this, i enjoy the lighting along with others, really good stuff there, again hopefully any of this helps instead of just praise for how cool it is turning out.
Thanks for the feedback and nice words! For the greenery, yes that is intentional. The theme goes around mega corporations and dense cities destroyed every possible green in cities you can think of. Having a plant in your life is now rare. Some short story point to clarify: Humans where wiped out by a virus, that spread fast because the air is thick and cities are dense. Only people on the ''high class'' levels are able to look at greenery and thats only in the form of holograms of trees or plants.
Good point on the need and possibilities of creating such a city. It's inspired on old sci fi art (see one of my first posts) but can definitely use more story telling around that part! Same goes for the lights. And yeah definitely can use some more rats and broken stuff! I'm learning more and more blueprints since the first post so interactive things like rats crawling around are now doable for me to implement.
Again thanks for the nice words! It's a spare time project for over 3 years now so a new update can take a while, but i'll hope you enjoy the next one! :)
Replies
So I'm currently working on a bath for the main characters room. It will be filled with a lot of crazy inventions that people will have later (most idea's are based on concepts from the 50's to 70's) For example, this bath is inspired on a bath that was presented at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka.
I want to make a little sequence for it that it fills with water and some water particles out of the sprayers. If someone knows a great way to do this or has a tutorial that could help, please send it to me!
Have a nice day!
Hello! More and more progress has been made on the main characters house. Just like the rest of the game, the style is a mix of retro. 50's & 60's in combination with science fiction and cyberpunk. It's really fun to work on this and find the combination between these two styles to make it believe able. The main character is surviving the big crisis (more on that later, and see my earlier posts) in his house. Therefore it is full of cans with food, etc.
This is you characters main house and the start of the game so it will be filled with a lot of detail and clues where you can find out how the world came the a point where it is now.
When the room/house is finished, I'll post some more (detailed) screenshots
Quarantine zone.
Cockroach particle. (GIF compression makes it a bit vague bit they are there!
Small preview of your first view of the city. Working hard on this part now for a preview trailer. But here is a small preview
Preview of the fending machine wall. (inspired by the awesome Bladerunner 2049 scene)
Work in progress shots for the first gameplay trailer. Last preview post before the actual gameplay trailer post
Yeah performance is a thing I'm continuously paying attention to. I first worked with distance field ambient occlusion, but that was such an impact on the performance that I moved away from that lately. Luckily the visual changes were minor. When importing models I directly work with LOD's. And level design wise I used some clever view blocking objects and design elements which helps performance big times. The performance is still oke, but yeah, it's is tricky making such big levels hahah
Hi everyone!
It's been a while since I've updated this blog with some new updates. I've been busy with my own company: https://www.extrude3d.nl/ I've spend a whole year developing projects in Unreal for clients. This means images in Unreal, video animations in Unreal but most important. Digital twin applications. So I've learned a ton on the programming side! All good news for the project since I now can program my own gameplay elements as well.
The biggest change so far for the project. I've migrated the project to Unreal Engine 5! With all the neon lights and cool indoor spaces, Lumen really does the trick here! Since the old project is quite a mess and way to big in size already (120GB, oops hahah) I've started from scratch. This means that some areas in the game are lost, so I've to redo them. Luckily the old project is still there so doing the level design is quite easy. Props have better LOD's or use nanite now. Textures are reduced, materials are better and optimized and level streaming is better organized. That I need to do some levels again design wise means it will take some time before you will see some new areas. But it's already showing the benefits. Area's that are the same now show +30 FPS! So that's a plus.
Let me know what you want to see. I can show some behind the scene's level design wise. I can show how I create props and elements. Or I could stream an hour of me level designing. Let me know! I'll try to update a bit more from time to time now.
Conscious Art Dump
Here are some work in progress images bellow:
Switched to 5.1 with the project. Best choice so far! Lumen can do amazing things. Enjoying the level designing and asset creation. So far i bought 3 asset packs for the environment and used the some megascans. The rest is all hand made. Switching between 3D and some 2D decal and advertisement creation is a nice balance. I'm not very font of turning this into a shooter or typical horror game, got some gameplay ideas in mind but if you have some suggestions let me know!
See you in the next post!
Hii, here is a small new update. Pay close attention to the details... PS: A gameplay video will be coming soon!
1st time seeing this thread, these are my 1st thoughts from an outsider looking in, hopefully it helps somehow.
Dedication ftw, pre-warning, not to remove all the hard work, i commend the effort it is admire-able, however i felt the need to share as it might help the author see an outsiders 1st thoughts.
Okay, i usually do this (to myself and keep it to myself but) which kind of "breaks", the fantasy aspect of games but how do these "people" breathe? or there are no people? Zero greenery to be seen not even 1 potted flower/plant, i take it this is the theme?
For a "city" like this to even get created, they would need to all be doing really well to warrant the need to even think to create this type of environment, & if there are no people here and just robotics or something along the lines of "imitation life-forms", they would create "cities/environments" to suite them not keep the discontinued "alt-life", that no longer remains.
Example, all the lights would probably be off to save what power is left, animals or rats would've eventually eaten though a lot of the garbage and it would be sprawled out on most of them, a lot of things would've have fallen from their places, depending on time-frame the EARTH (if this is taken from there and not some floating area) would've cracked some buildings in half, or sunken many objects including buildings, the ground is still present i presume.
If this is all just for story telling and not a game at all, then i think its all okay ignore this post then, thou these thoughts might still arise in all new viewers especially people not viewing all these updates and any explanations to pieces, maybe young teens wouldn't care much about the logic behind it all so it works there.
At the moment i can not even do half of this (yet) so take all this with the grainiest of salts, (i.e. not to heart, i mean well).
Besides all of this, amazing mountain of work and effort, i echo the love of the emotion you are getting across with all of this, i enjoy the lighting along with others, really good stuff there, again hopefully any of this helps instead of just praise for how cool it is turning out.
Congrats, amazing accomplishment.
Thanks for the feedback and nice words! For the greenery, yes that is intentional. The theme goes around mega corporations and dense cities destroyed every possible green in cities you can think of. Having a plant in your life is now rare. Some short story point to clarify: Humans where wiped out by a virus, that spread fast because the air is thick and cities are dense. Only people on the ''high class'' levels are able to look at greenery and thats only in the form of holograms of trees or plants.
Good point on the need and possibilities of creating such a city. It's inspired on old sci fi art (see one of my first posts) but can definitely use more story telling around that part! Same goes for the lights. And yeah definitely can use some more rats and broken stuff! I'm learning more and more blueprints since the first post so interactive things like rats crawling around are now doable for me to implement.
Again thanks for the nice words! It's a spare time project for over 3 years now so a new update can take a while, but i'll hope you enjoy the next one! :)